Wall Street ends weaker after stimulus hopes come back down to earth

Wall Street finished weaker on Wednesday, led lower by Amazon and Microsoft, as investors lost hope that a US fiscal stimulus would be approved before the presidential election in November.

Downbeat comments from Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin that a deal would not likely be made before the vote added to fragile sentiment following a mixed bag of quarterly earnings reports from major Wall Street lenders.

"At this point getting something done before the election and executing on that would be difficult, just given where we are and the level of detail, but we're going to try to continue to work